Final music magazine

Production diary #18

Today I have come into school extra early to make sure everything was finished and to make slight changes to my magazine so it could be the best it could be. 

I have received final feedback from friends to gain their opinion on the final product. Even though the majority believed no further changes needed to be made to my magazine, I have recieved a few improvements with my front cover and content page to show even more variety and make my magazine appear more interesting to my readers. Such improvements included showing variation in fonts in my front cover, making the captions featured on my contents page more interesting to my readers and increasing the size of some pictures featured in my music magazine. 

After making several of these changes, I then exported my magazine by creating an PDF file. Once the PDF file was created, using Issu I was able to upload my magazine and present it as a realistic online magazine. 

Overall, I am very pleased with my final product as it demonstrates my genre clearly by including many stereotypical famous R&B artists and using props and costumes that identity with this genre. Additionally, I believe my music magazine will attract my target audience  successfully as all features included will get the readers involved in the magazine such as using social networking throughout my magazine. 

I am now very confident with all the skills and knowledge I have now gained by creating my music magazine and the research I have carried out by doing so. 

Production diary #17

This week I have been focusing on improving my seven evaluation questions as I want to clearly demonstrate my progress into my magazines, the knowledge and skills I have now gained and the clear success of my music magazine OnPoint. After making a simple draft of my evaluations into word documents I decided to present my evaluations in more interesting way. This include using Prezi,Movie maker,Slideshare, PowToon and YouTube. PowToon was very new to me as was found by simply searching video creators into Google, it is a very easy programme to use and allow me to add animations,vary the time per slide and add music to the background. In both of my videos I decided to include R&B music in the background as this would link back to the genre of my music magazine and link back to artists used in my magazine such as Eminem and Rihanna.

Using movie maker I created a video displaying the type of audience who will be attracted to my magazine. Likewise to PowToon this was very easy in figuring out how to work all the tools needed. Instead of adding background music, I decided to do a voice over of me reading the slides to give my presentation a more personal touch. 

Today I will be recording a video of me answering question three. I decided to record a video as I believe I need more videos of myself especially ones of myself. I will be using movie maker to edit my video by inserting text and logos of the companies I am talking about. This will make my video more interesting and show my skills of editing videos.

Creating contents page

Production Diary #16

Progress 6

As shown in my audience feedback, to make my music magazine more successful it was key to change the layout and positioning slightly to make it appear more professional. Therefore for my Band Index, I have made sure that all artists name line up equally on both sides by adjusting the widths between the page numbers and artists. This has resulted in my Band Index look far more professional as it is far clearer to read than before as shown in the image. Similarly, I have adjusted the width between the page numbers and sell lines.

Shown in my feedback from both my peers and online survey, the box out text was not clear to read and didn't stand out. Therefore to overcome this problem, I simply changed the font colour from black to white as the text is now clear to read from the dark red box and additionally white is apart of my magazines colour scheme therefore will show the house style is continued throughout the magazine.Addtionally, I decided to add more text to the review so the box text would look less empty, 'as she hopes her lyrics will touch many of her fans as she knows everyone has lost someone close to heart' was simply added to the end of the review.

The image of the featured artist, HardBarzHarvey was enlarged and pulled to the center of the page. This was to highlight her importance and make more of a statement. I decided to still keep the pull quote on the page as by her looking up in the image suggests she is inspired by how tough she is. I have changed the colour of the pull quote from red to black as seen in the front cover and content page a lot of red is already featured in my magazine.

The most change and progress in my magazine this week has been in my content page as I was not fully pleased with the previous outcome. From my audience feedback from both my peers and online survey I have made many improvements to my content page. Firstly, I have added the social networking logos besides OnPoint's Facebook and Twitter page and also placing them in a dark red box as shown in my feedback the social networking was not clear to all readers and therefore by doing so will make my readers are clearly aware of the sites and continuing the house style by using a dark red box and white font. 

The most dramatic change I have made to my content page is the layout of both the images and text. By receiving inspiration from other existing professional magazines, I decided to change my four sections into four columns with two columns on either side of the double page as this has made my content page look far more professional and clearer to read. This was easily done using tools in Indesign to create two columns. However, as the layout changed there was several empty spaces within the text of each section, to overcome this I added a description under each heading within the 'Regular' section which was recommended in my class feedback and also adding several more popular R&B artists to the band index by looking through artists onto my iTunes account.

Due to the change in text layout, I had to rearrange the positioning in the majority of my chosen images. Firstly,I decided to add a grey outline around my chosen images so they would clearly stand out against the white background. Also to make my images stand out, I create caption boxes at the bottom of each image using the shape tool in Indesign. As shown in the rest of my magazine, I have continue the house style by using a dark red box and black text. The images of both popular artists, Etta Bond and Yungen&Mikestar were decreased in size and moved to the left hand side of the double page as the images chosen were best suited as thumbnail pictures. Additionally, the image taken at Reading Festival was increased to take up the majority of the bottom half of the page as this is a very popular music festival and by Eminem headlining last year highlights that it is not the typical rock dominated festival. 

Class Presentation and Feedback

Presenting my music magazine to the rest of the class allowed me to confidently sell my magazine and identify all the reasoning behind all the features of my magazine. This has resulted in me being more confident in my magazine being a high success in attracting my target audience.
I took this opportunity to ask my peers for verbal feedback as by receiving feedback from my target audience will allow to me identity the improvements needed for my magazine to make it the best it could be. My main concerns I decided to address to my peers were issues with my front cover and content page.
Improvements for my front covers suggested by my peers included:
- Change the style of fonts or show variation in fonts in the sell lines
- Have the text appear bigger in the button
- Too busy with the sell lines and takes away from the image
However, I received positive feedback that my picture and artist was clearly liked.

Improvements for my content page suggested by my peers included:
- Move the Macklemore image to the left slightly as it appears to close to the text
- Put a box/outline around the image of Georgia due to the white background
However, I received feedback that my font clearly stands out and is appropriate for my magazine.

I have taken all of the suggestions from my peers to improve my magazine. I have changed the layout of both my content page and front cover which has now resulted into the front cover looking less busy and the Macklemore image is now moved away from the text. Additionally, I have put a grey outline around the image of Georgia as peers suggested the image was not clear due to the white background. Similarly, I have changed the font and its size of the sell lines on my front cover which has made my image more clearly grab the readers attention but still stand out.
The feedback has clearly helped in improving my magazine as I am now completely confident with every page featured in my magazine as I believe they will all clearly demonstrate the genre of my magazine and attract my target audience successfully.